


Hearts and Minds Racing Together

by Churbooseanon



Category: Marvel (Comics), X-Factor (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, M/M, No tags are universal to all of the ficlets so please read notes each chapter, referenced canon character death, referenced canon events might be spoilers for X-Factor 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: Sometimes love is two guys, coffee, noodles, and more emotional baggage than one person can carry. These are glimpses of moments they find themselves in together.A collection of brief Thinkfast ficlets based on requests I have taken on my Tumblr. Each chapter's notes will give any specific needed warnings.
Relationships: David Alleyne/Tommy Shepherd
Kudos: 8





	1. Seeking Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: There's a knock at the door. It's midnight.
> 
> Warnings: Referenced Canon Character Death

The first rap at the door has Tommy up immediately. From dead to the world to perfectly awake, ready to run in less time than it actually took for his brain to really start to think about it. Call it the trained reflexes of a hero, call it a product of superjuvie, call it part of his mutation, Tommy didn’t care one way or another. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would bother thinking about anyway, not like the momentary confusion that came with looking at his phone.

Who the fuck would show up at his apartment at this hour? Especially since there was a better than even chance that Tommy wasn’t home or even in the state at this hour of night, not when there was possible heroics to do.

He grabs a robe from the chair near the bed, the plush soft one that David had gotten him for his birthday, and pulled it on. The floor was so cold under his feet as he padded over it, the rugs moved aside earlier so he could pace without wearing the things out. A part of him thought that he really should go and put them back, but without David around to complain about how cold the floor was without them, Tommy couldn’t find it in him to care.

The second rap on the door comes as Tommy’s already through the apartment, his hand on the knob. His free hand was held down and back, the starts of a tremor forming in it. Being ready for a fight was important, and the ripple of the power through him felt good. Familiar. Reliable.

He opens the door and stares at David. David in clothes that Tommy has never seen him in before which was impressive because Tommy was prone to crashing at the guy’s place. These were new, and flattering. Just like the new hair cut. The new glasses. Everything different from three days ago, when his boyfriend had ghosted him.

“David, do you know-” he starts to say righteous anger bubbling up in him. How could David, of all people, abandon him like that? Just disappear when he knew, he _knew_ , how much things like that affected Tommy? David, who was more tied to the internet and social media than just about anyone else Tommy had ever met, including Billy?

There was no chance to snipe at him for the radio silence. There was no chance to feign like Tommy wasn’t relieved to see him even while he was angry. There was just no _time_ for anything, even for a speedster, before David was throwing himself forward and into Tommy’s arms.

 _Something happened_.

David doesn’t say anything. For a long time, a personal eternity that was probably like five minutes, neither does Tommy. They stand there in the doorway, David’s hands clinging desperately tight to Tommy’s robe. Something happened, and Tommy doesn’t know how to fix it, or how to get David to talk about it. That’s one place they’re alike. When they open up, they open up a lot. But when they feel they have to shoulder something alone, the Juggernaut himself couldn’t drag it from them. Better, he decided (mostly from experience), to let it go for now. Better to be what David needed.

“Let me put some tea on, okay? That oolong you like. And I think I still have some of the frozen pad thai you made me in the freezer. I’ll eat that up. Sound cool?”

David’s head shifted to nuzzle against Tommy’s neck, his newly longer hair brushing Tommy’s skin in a pleasing sort of way. When he spoke, his lips brushed feather light over Tommy’s skin, like little kisses left repeatedly in the form of words.

“Sounds nice. Though I did make those noodles for you.”

“They’re better when you get to watch me eat,” Tommy dismissed before wrapping an arm around David’s waist. He lifted his taller boyfriend just a bit off the floor, pulled him backwards, and closed the apartment door.

Whatever happened didn’t matter right now. Taking care of David did.


	2. Fireworks Aren't Always Pretty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Everything’s gone to shit. Someone might be screaming, multiple someones, but he can’t tell. His ears are ringing.
> 
> Warnings: Referenced Character Deaths (Allusions to David's history with the X-Men), Injuries

There were days in his life that by the end, David wished he had never bothered to get out of bed. The list started with the night Laurie died. The bus explosion was definitely up there. Limbo. And those were just the top three.

Tonight, he thought, might end up on a slightly expanded version of that list because everything had gone to shit. What was meant to be an evening together watching fireworks over the lake with David’s family had turned into… well, this. People were screaming, so many voices raised in pain and fear, but how many there were, or where, David couldn’t quite tell. Those sorts of things were made so much harder to parse when his ears were ringing.

“Da–dholyfu—reyou–”

Tommy’s voice, because who else could it belong to with how the words blurred into one another, was impossible to truly make out. The ringing kept surging back up so David could only hear parts of it.

“W-what?” he asked, his eyes coming open as he sat up. Tommy was there, soot smeared over his cheek, fear in his eyes, the sleeve of his shirt singed. But more or less, Tommy was in one piece.

“-ir–rks disp— gone wr—”

Still the words didn’t make sense in David’s ears, but he nodded along, because as he looked around he could see the results for himself. Fire in the grass and bushes, smoke from the barge on the lake where the things should have been launched from, people limping around in a daze. Something went off too low, or poorly angled and thus exploded above the audience. There was a lot David could do to trace the whole incident back. But his concern in the moment was on the people.

Tommy must have seen the dawning horror David felt, the way his stomach rolled as a relevant detail came to mind. They hadn’t come here alone. Before David could ask, Tommy just gestured. Sure enough, when David’s eyes turned to the side he found her, there, whole, shaking. His little sister Kim, sitting back in the grass, looking ready to cry from fear. Alive, unharmed, unlike David, who was starting to realize there was a flare of pain from his head, and something warm running down his cheek. Didn’t matter. None of that mattered. They were all alive, they could move, and this was a crisis.

“Kim,” David said, and he knew he had said it even though he couldn’t fully hear the name from his lips. Didn’t matter. His ears would stop ringing. Or they wouldn’t. Either way, he could read lips so he was good to go. “Stay here. Call for paramedics.”

 _What about you_ , her lips said, and David ignored the ringing and the sting as he got to his feet, even though Tommy was trying to keep him down.

“People could be hurt. I’m a doctor. Sorta. I’ve gotta help,” he insisted as he rose. And then he turned his gaze to Tommy.

All they had to do was lock eyes and Tommy nodded. Then the speedster was off like a bolt, water soon kicking up from the surface of the lake. Tommy was, always and forever, a hero first. He knew what they had to do.

And David? David was glad he didn’t have to ask. Asking his boyfriend to run right toward the most dangerous place right now would have been too much. But they were heroes, and they both knew what was needed. So David offered his sister one last smile to comfort her, and then ran off. There were people out there, screaming for help, and he wasn’t going to let them down. Maybe, in the end, he wasn’t too different from Tommy in that regard.


	3. Important Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: He moved so he couldn't see the tears falling off his face 
> 
> Warnings: None

Life is made up of moments. Big moments like the Young Avengers finding him. Small moments like helping Kate steal her bow back from the other Hawkeye. Big moments like when Rebecca Kaplan had embraced him on their first meeting and said that he’d always have a home there if he needed it. Small moments like finding a place that would hire him in a way that worked for him. Huge moments like meeting a fucking hot man in the hallway of his boring ass job.

This… Fuck, how do you even quantify a moment like this. Was it small because it could happen a hundred times over in the future, if not more? Or was it big because it was the first?

Frankly, Tommy didn’t know. What he did know was that David had smiled at him with that stupid mushy smile he got. The one that looked like Billy or Teddy smiling at each other, with their dimples seeming to line up and sunshine radiating from their stupid annoying faces. But of course David didn’t have dimples. He had little smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that were almost but not quite masked by his glasses. Wrinkles no one should have at their age but David had been through shit and the fact that he had still found enough time in his life to smile to start getting those was a miracle of the highest order.

But there it was, David getting that stupid mushy smile he got as he looked up from his smartpad’s holographic display, a smile that didn’t take away the depth of color that was the bags under his eyes. Two days with minimal sleep and popping around timezones frequently had to do that to a guy. Still there was that dopey little smile that was Tommy’s, only Tommy’s, as Tommy held out the caramel latte he had picked up for David from that one little boutique coffee shop they had loved during their trip to Milan.

“You went all the way to Italy for me?” David asked with that dopey smile that made him look so happy for a man so tired and so strained.

“Well, someone needs to keep you caffeinated. Guess it should be me.”

And the smile went warmer, softer, gooey like when David made chocolate chip cookies and they came out of the oven and Tommy couldn’t find it in himself to let them cool before taking a bite. The sort of look that would make Tommy fake gagging at his twin but just made him melt.

“I love you too, Tommy.”

Four words, one proper noun. Who fucking knew that was all it took? Big or small, he didn’t know. What he knew was that Tommy moved quickly to the kitchen so David see the tears of joy in his eyes. It only took a second to compose himself, one he occupied with getting some biscotti out of their cookie jar. Tommy returned to the dining room and put it down in front of David.

“Yeah. Make sure to come to bed sometime tonight, okay?”


	4. Thing For Speedsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “So was this a coincidence or do you just have a thing for speedsters?”
> 
> Warnings: None

“So,” Sofia says with that little lilt to her voice that David remembered from high school as preceding her saying something he didn’t want to hear.

“So,” David answered back, leaning forward against railing of the stairs to look down on the gathering in the living room.

He should be down there. Had been down there until Josh had accidentally knocked a glass of Bloody Mary right on David’s pants. All these years, all this power, and his best friend was still a complete and total klutz. Sometimes David just wondered why he was so fond of the man. But ultimately the little bumble had led David excusing himself upstairs to change, and when he’d come back down he’d found Sofia watching the others from above. Was she waiting for him, or had she just come down from a flight? No way of knowing, so David had stopped beside her and, yeah. So. A word that was waiting for followup.

“Was this,” she said at last, “a coincidence or do you just have a thing for speedsters?”

The ‘this’ in question was punctuated with her hand gesturing down toward where Tommy was regaling the rest of David’s former team with a story about the time that David had helped him defeat giant, fire breathing chickens. The speedster was bursting with energy, moving around in a blur as he pantomimed, gesticulated, and all in all tried to play three parts in a single comical showing. Jay and Laurie clearly hung on every word and action, which made sense as they wouldn’t have seen it on the news. Josh laughed as his hands reached out to keep Tommy from falling over the coffee table. Nori… well, her attention was clearly divided between Tommy’s antics and glancing up toward David and Sofia. From the expression she wore, Sofia wasn’t the only one that had the question on her mind.

It’s not a question he could normally answer quickly. It would take thought, consideration, self-reflection.

This isn’t the first time the question had come up. No, it was one that David had asked himself, one that Tommy had brought up when they had the talk about pasts. Therefore the answer was already there, quite ready.

“A bit of both. Better to say I have a thing for people with a long ‘e’ sound in their nickname,” David answered as he watched Tommy move. “But I guess part of what draws me to him, what drew me to her, what I _need_ in a partner, is someone I can’t always predict. A mind like mine, Sofia, especially in the full bloom of my powers, needs to be pushed. Needs to be off guard. Needs to be shoved off balance. He gives me that.”

“Is that all he gives you?”

David just smiles before starting down the steps.

“No. That’s just the start.”


	5. Recipe For Disaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Introducing them had been a terrible idea. He had only himself to blame for this madness.
> 
> Warnings: None

David Alleyne was smart, even smarter now that his mutant ability had been restored to him. Where he might have been somewhere in the top few hundred minds in the world without his gift, he had definitely jumped higher with it.

This was worthy of noting because there were many things David’s intelligence and mutant gift granted to him. High up there on the list was that he had a very high level of accuracy when it came to predicting the behavior of those people around him, especially those he knew well. Therefore there was an argument to be made that he had every reason to see this coming.

And yet no one had. Not one person had the present of forethought to say ‘ _this is a bad idea’._

“Oh man, you almost had it!”

“Like hell I’m happy with almost! Come on, get another up!”

David watched as Josh picked up another clay pigeon from the stack of them that he’d talked Krakoa into making for them. Carefully the man tested the thing in his hands, clearly making sure it would fly right. Then, with a smile almost as radiant as his skin, Josh wound up and flung the thing up and away, a clay frisbee whipping through the air. Together with David the mutant healer watched the disk sail gracefully up into the open air, nary a wobble to its flight.

Nearby Tommy stood ready, one hand raised in the air, palm up and out, pointed toward the flying target. The smile on his lips was predatory, his hand following the path of the disc with a smoothness that a normal body couldn’t easily replicate. All the while his hand blurred in the air, vibrating with a speed that made it hard to look at. Soon the pigeon was wobbling too, but not in a way that came from degradation of the spin or turbulence. In his head David counted to three, and when he hits the number the air **cracks** with the explosion. Fragments shout outwards, a rain of shrapnel that was far enough away to not hurt anyone, thankfully.

Just like that, Speed had just become an even more formidable force. The world had no idea, would never know that it was all because David had left his best friend and his boyfriend meet.

“Dude, that was fucking _amazing_!”

“Yeah,” Tommy agreed, suddenly at their side and grinning. “Never managed a moving target that small and fast before.”

“Hey,” Josh offered, smirking, “what if we up the difficulty?”

“Like how?”

“Baseball?”

David may have created a monster. Or two of them.


	6. Meet X-Factor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Tommy introduced to X-factor team
> 
> Warnings: None
> 
> Notes: This was written before Issue 7 of X-Factor 2020 came out.

This wasn’t how any of it was supposed to happen, not by half. Tonight had been carefully planned to make sure that this wasn’t how it all came together. Trevor had a gaming night with some of his friends on another part of Krakoa. Lorna had obligations for family dinner with her father, just as Rachel did with the Summers and Greys. Jeanne-Marie, Jean-Paul, and Kyle were all scheduled to have dinner with some higher ups in their company elsewhere. Akihiro had been easy to be rid of given all David had to do was talk the guy into going out for drinks. Everything had been perfectly arranged.

Which was why David hadn’t cared when he’d been pulled into making out with Tommy on the downstairs couch, the show they were watching now running without attention on the holoprojector. David was pinned under his boyfriend, the fingers of one hand curled in the other man’s hair, his other hand slipping up under Tommy’s hoodie. All he wanted to do was touch, to explore, to feel the other man against him, here in the good his life had started working itself into.

It was all perfect. Until, you know, the gasp. Tommy went still, stiff as a board, at the sound, perhaps before the sound was even finished. There wasn’t a chance for David to protest before Tommy was sitting on the far side of the couch, foot bouncing against the floor in a clear sign of anxiety. It took David a bit more effort to push himself up, straightening his shirt as he did so. They were already caught, he intended to be composed before he bothered to let them see him at his most ruffled.

At last David felt ready to handle what was going on so he looked and… Well, that wasn’t what he’d expected. It wasn’t just one or two members of the team returned from their outing early. Instead it was, well, _all_ of them. Every. Single. Last. One.

“Guess that explains why you were so eager to rush me out,” Akihiro said as he moved forward, right toward and then of course past the couch. Strange.

“Yeah, fuck you too Wolvy,” Tommy counters, raising a single finger in salute to the other man.

“You’re as much of a brat now as you were before,” Akihiro called back as he started quickly up the stairs.

“You two know each other?” David asked as Rachel moved forward with a wave before heading down the other stairs toward her room, Amazing Baby at her heels.

“Yeah, when he was working for the wanna-be Avengers, he came and fucked with some shit the Young Avengers were dealing with. Tried to seduce Hulkling with his mojo or whatever,” Tommy answered as he rose to his feet and moved to greet Lorna, who had approached with open arms.

“Wait, Skrull are immune to pheromone things like that,” David observed as he got to his feet and moved to join Tommy. What he’d expected to be a big affair given who Tommy was the son of was just turning into a trainwreck of confusion.

“Yeah, was funny to see Teddy tell him that,” Tommy agreed as he grabbed Lorna in his arms and spun her around.

“Thomas! I didn’t know you and David were involved,” Lorna laughed in delight at the treatment. Apparently the fact that they weren’t related hadn’t really gotten to Tommy or Lorna, or they just didn’t care.

“Yeah, I don’t know what he sees in me,” Tommy answered as he put her down and David was still left staring.

“Probably him,” Jeanne-Marie mumbled before flying up through the center of the stairwell, clearly heading up toward her room.

“What are you all doing back?” David found himself turning to Jean-Paul to ask. “And where’s Kyle?”

“Handling the dinner,” Jean-Paul sighed, before holding up his phone. “Clearly you didn’t get my texts. We have an emergency deployment. Suit up.”

David felt awkward given the fact that he had, well, turned his phone off. Time with Tommy was supposed to be time with Tommy. Not with all of his team. Looked like he really needed to think that through more in the future.

Lorna released her ‘nephew’ and looked to David, a pitying look on her face. Tommy, though, just shook his head.

“Dude, it’s date night, you can’t just expect me to let him go,” Tommy insisted, turning to Jean-Paul with annoyance in every bit of his body.

Jean-Paul, in full team leader mode, just looked the younger speedster up and down and then sighed. At last his attention turned to David and he nodded.

“Get him something to wear. But just this once, got it?”

Who was David to argue?


	7. Green Eyed Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Jealousy was a very bitter feeling. It burned in his chest, his throat, his eyes.
> 
> Warnings: None
> 
> Notes: Takes place at the end of Young Avengers V2

Hindsight is 20/20. It was an observation that had happened to come up a few time in David’s life since his mutation had awakened. The saying was meant to imply that foresight was difficult, could be flawed, could be rendered moot if the circumstances leading up to what it foresaw were changed. Hindsight, however, was easy. You could look at a situation where you’d made a mistake and easily realize ‘wow I should have done this instead and then that would have happened’. Hindsight was the bane of most people in a heroic sort of life, looking back and realizing how you’d fallen into a trap or let something happen that never should have had a chance.

Sometimes hindsight was realizing that there had been a chance to say something, and having been quiet. For David hindsight said it was silly for him to ever think that he wouldn’t be pulled into the world of heroics. Hindsight said that he never should have thought he could get away from the pain that came with losing who and what he was as a mutant. And right now, a step through America’s portal, following behind Tommy where he had an arm thrown over Kate’s shoulder, hindsight was saying he should have grabbed Tommy before the guy could run off to the party.

Jealousy, he well knew, was a very bitter feeling, one David was very intimately familiar with. Jealousy had been a frequent tingle in the back of his head in high school at Xavier’s. After M-Day and losing his powers, it had been a constant companion as he looked to all of those who still had power and envied them. Jealousy had grown louder and more constant and gnawing at him until the only thing he could do was get away from mutants altogether, the issues with Scott Summers’ decisions and Xavier’s death only being straws breaking the metaphorical camel’s poor back. Jealousy had pulsed with his heart with every moment he struggled to find a job in a world that was already against him for being black before they found out he was a former mutant or associated with Utopia. Jealousy had left a constant bad taste in his mouth as he got to watch how easily Billy had the love and devotion of his friends when the guy was frankly not as supportive of them as they deserved.

Never before had jealousy gone for the full on burn in his heart, in his throat, in his eyes. Never before, though, had he watched Tommy Shepherd falling all over Kate even as Noh-Varr watched in agony, and America looked annoyed. Never before, though, had he had something he wanted and hadn’t realized so very close and yet so impossibly far away. And this, he feared, was a gulf he could not cross.

“Give it time.”

David stopped for half a second, looking over to Teddy, who had fallen back to walk beside him as the group made their way over to the normal booth in the diner. Already Tommy was slipping in beside Kate, which was Noh-Varr’s normal spot. But Teddy wasn’t focused on that, he was focused on David. Kind, gentle Teddy. Why?

“Give what time?”

Teddy just tilted his head toward Tommy and Kate, where Kate didn’t seem so impressed by Tommy’s words and the rest of the booth slowly filled up. It was looking like David was going to join Noh-Varr out on the far edge, far from Kate, far from Billy and Teddy, and definitely far from Tommy.

“Him,” Teddy said. And there was nothing else before Teddy walked away.

America was gesturing for David to come join them, and he wasn’t about to protest. Tonight was their victory lap after all, and all because of David. He didn’t want to let it go. Still, he was glad for his sun glasses, because he didn’t want anyone seeing just how his eyes shone with unshod emotion.


	8. Important Question Asked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “You can’t do this. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”
> 
> Warnings: None

“You can’t do this. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

To say that those words weren’t what David had been expecting to hear would be… Well, an understatement. In fact, it was a statement of a level that made David’s heart break just a little as he looked up at his boyfriend, Tommy’s face lit by the fullness of the moon in the sky which also served to make his hair positively radiant. This moment could have been so perfect, with the stars and the moon and the way that Tommy looked tonight.

It was no understatement to say that the entire night had been leading to this moment. A lovely dinner that David had made to Tommy’s tastes, packed up in two picnic baskets, and carried up to the most beautiful cliff side view in all of Krakoa. The wine had been perfect, selected by Emma Frost herself seeing as her skills for that sort of thing exceeded his own and David couldn’t pick up skills as easily from telepaths with strong defenses like she had. Dinner itself had come after watching one of the evening displays of mutant fireworks, which more meant mutants with radiant powers letting them off into the night to celebrate another successful Crucible revival.

Tonight all of Krakoa was celebrating; for new life, for the return of what was lost, for love, and of course for the freedom all of those things represented for their people. Tonight was supposed to be that for David as well, not to mention a sign of a new start. But there was Tommy, looking down at him, vaguely offended.

What had he done wrong?

“I… I understand,” David whispered, starting to close the ring box he had been holding up and out toward Tommy.

Was he going too fast? Was Tommy not interested in this level of commitment? Was he just reading their entire relationship wrong? He felt so sick as these questions ran through his head lightning fast.

Of course no questions he could ask himself moved faster than Tommy did, and Tommy’s fingers darted out, snatching the box away before David could close it.

“Woah, what the fuck?” Tommy snapped, looking at him as he held the box. “David, I wasn’t saying no.”

And now he was far more confused than he had been before.

“You just said-”

A second box all but appeared in Tommy’s hand. Clearly a ring box. Clearly not the one that David had offered up to his boyfriend moments before.

“I’m supposed to be the fast one here,” Tommy said, his voice soft, and maybe a touch fond. “I was supposed to ask you before you even thought of it. So, uh, David?”

There was no reason for Tommy to open the box and ask. David was already on his feet and throwing himself into Tommy’s arms.

“Yes. Yes yes yes. A million times yes.”

“Cool. Uh, mind letting me go so we can get these rings on?”


	9. Some Things Shouldn't Be Secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “You could’ve died! Do you know what would happen if you died? You’d be dead!”
> 
> Warning: Referenced Canon character death
> 
> Notes: Takes Place After X-Factor 5, and sometime before X-Factor 7.

“You could’ve died. Do you know what would happen if you died?”

David, who had been listening to this particular little spiel for coming up on five minutes now which really was a record for Tommy’s ability to yell at him, wanted to roll his eyes. His brain immediately wanted to insert a few things to cut off Tommy’s ranting. Of course he knew that none of them would truly comfort his boyfriend, so it was better not to do so. Tommy was the sort of person who needed to run out of steam before he could really let go of a problem.

“You’d be dead!”

Okay, you know what? Never mind. David grit his teeth and looked at his boyfriend over that last comment. This, at least, could be corrected. He reached up to his glasses and pulled them off, something he rarely ever did when he was awake. Which, of course, silenced Tommy in a way that normal words would not. David was, after all, a creature of habit, habits that Tommy had long since learned and started to shape his life around. So, well, he was absolutely paying attention now.

“First of all, Tommy, I would be dead. For all of several hours. X-Factor is second highest priority on the queue, right behind X-Force on an active deployment. We get bumped up ahead of even whoever is currently wearing the ‘X-Men’ team designation because more can be deployed to back them up, and there is only one X-Factor. Secondly, while I would be missing a few moments of memory since my last backup, I keep a very detailed personal journal at this point…”

A result of the paranoia that had settled over David since his previous death, though he wasn’t exactly about to tell Tommy about the whole ‘I died recently and haven’t told you yet and look at us, we’re doing fine’ thing. So he kept his journals and personal logs and backed them up regularly because really, the mental backups could only do so much.

“And finally? If you think Jean-Paul or Lorna would have let me die on our first trip into the field as a proper team, you’re crazy. The former because he’s got too much pride on the line, the latter because your Aunt seriously was hovering while we were in the Mojoverse, specifically because she’s worried for you.”

Which likely came down to the fact that Lorna was well aware that David hadn’t told Tommy yet. In fact, David had TOLD her he hadn’t told Tommy and asked her to keep it private. So yeah, there it was.

“But you could have been dead there for a while and no one would have known!” Tommy protested, so worried that he was nearly vibrating. 

David reached out and laid a hand on Tommy’s arm, a gentle touch that came with the softest smile.

“That wouldn’t have happened. Jeanne-Marie was watching the Mojoverse feeds while we were gone,” David said, not knowing that she and Akihiro had stepped away for a while during it, “so if there was an issue, Krakoa would have known immediately, and even had it on video. Secondly, though I don’t know how you got Mojoverse cable, though i expect I’m going to have to talk to Billy about that later today, if I’d gotten killed or even badly injured, we both know you would have blown down the metaphorical doors to Krakoa just to get there, just to tell them what happened to me. So I’d have been back to you quick as a thought.”

Because he knew Tommy enough to know it was absolutely true. Even when he wasn’t there, his boyfriend had his back. Which was a comfort he didn’t even know how to voice.

“David, I just…”

“I know,” he said, reaching out to pull Tommy into his arms. “I know. I remember what it was like when you were missing too.”

Neither of them deserved to go through that pain again. Ever. He’d be careful, David promised himself. For Tommy’s sake.


End file.
